Personal trainer Lauren Caffrey is set to realise a dream by opening her own gym after seeing her client list more than treble in less than a year. Tony McDonough reports

Liverpool personal trainer Lauren Caffrey has seen her client list more than treble during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns, Lauren was running The Zone Personal Training from the garage at her parents’ home. When she was forced to take the sessions online, she and fellow personal trainer Emily Stevenson were training 40-50 clients between them across 120 sessions per week.

However, in less than a year the client list has grown to 150. And a further 100 people now also subscribe to The Zone’s app. This has led to Lauren’s income increasing fivefold.

Now, as reported in LBN earlier this year, the 23-year-old entrepreneur is due to open her own New York-inspired gym at Mill Lane Trading Park in Wavertree as soon as Government restrictions are lifted.

The launch of The Zone will be the realisation of a dream for Lauren who who set a goal of opening her own gym when she was just 14. On Mondays to Fridays the gym will be used by The Zone’s 10 personal trainers who will be putting their one-to-one clients through their paces.

The gym floor will then be open to the public at weekends where day passes will be available to purchase. Lauren is also creating The Zen – a yoga studio in a separate unit upstairs.

She hopes to bring together every aspect of lifestyle, health and wellbeing all under one roof with The Zone also offering physio sessions, botox treatments and up-and-coming gym wear brand Sporty Lula which is available to purchase from The Zone.

The facility will have capacity for Lauren and her team to train up to 15 people per class with four classes running each day. There will be around 80-100 people per day in personal training sessions and a further 12 people per yoga class.

Lauren is part of the business coaching group Online Trainer Education, founded and run by Adam Hayley, helping her to structure her online business and point her in the right direction for business growth.

She said: “It’s amazing to think that The Zone will go from helping around 50 people each week when we had the studio to around 500 people at our new facility. We’re hiring personal trainers and have created 15-20 jobs during the pandemic which is something I’m incredibly proud of.

“I’ve worked so hard over the last year but when you have a dream, you put your all into it and I don’t do anything by halves. I knew I wanted to open a space that would transform our clients’ physical and mental health to become the very best version of themselves and I wanted that space to be amazing. The Zone will be exactly that.

“At 17, I stayed on at school in the hopes of studying a business degree at university but on paper, I simply wasn’t clever enough and didn’t get past my first year of sixth form.

“I left school and did an apprenticeship in personal training and fast forward six years, lots of hard work and plenty of blood, sweat and tears and I’m now running a really successful business. I know this is exactly where I’m meant to be.”

Lauren also received help from the Liverpool City Region Enterprise Hub, via The Women’s Organisation. You can speak to the Enterprise Hub team via enterprisehub@thewo.org.uk or 0151 706 8113. Enterprise Hub is part funded by European Regional Development Fund and is free to access.